Cross-Channel Marketing Opportunities for Online Video

We’ve come to associate virality with a massive view count on a single channel, so is it any wonder, then, that brands and marketers place such a huge importance on one or two video-sharing sites? The answer is no, but because many focus solely on a couple major video marketing outlets, other equally effective promotional channels are left untouched.

Obviously, the largest video-sharing site for marketers is YouTube. In a survey from the Web Video Marketing Council, ReelSEO and Flimp Media, 94% of respondents said they used YouTube to share their video content—and with good reason! According to comScore’s December 2013 Online Video Rankings, Google sites, driven primarily by YouTube, received 159.1 million unique viewers and served 3.6 billion ad impressions.

Though YouTube may be the go-to video marketing site for most companies, there are other channels brands can utilize to promote their video content:

Vimeo

32.9 million unique viewers*

142.4 million video downloads/live streams*

32.3 minutes per viewer*

51.1% of respondents use Vimeo to share branded video content**

AOL Inc.

76 million unique users*

1.4 billion video downloads/live streams*

60.4 minutes per viewer*

#1 server of ad impressions with 4.3 billion*

51.9% reach of the total U.S. population*

Yahoo Sites

53.4 million unique users*

392.5 million video downloads/live streams*

47.8 minutes per viewer*

Not only are several video sharing sites seeing increases in viewership and engagement, but social media networks are also becoming popular destinations for online video marketing content. In December, Facebook’s 79 million monthly users viewed 3.7 billion videos* (both user-initiated and auto-played videos viewed longer than three seconds). With Facebook’s new video ad platform, marketers have the opportunity to connect with targeted audiences that are more likely to engage with and view video ads all the way through.

Vine and Instagram are additional social video powerhouses. One way many brands advertise with YouTube is through pre-roll ads. More often than not, these ads can be skipped by users within five seconds—a custom six-second Vine or 15-second Instagram video may be just as compelling. These platforms boast user bases of 40 and 130 million and are optimized for search engine indexing with the ability to use hashtags and tag individual users. Short-form video is incredibly popular amongst internet users—it’s essential for brands to have some kind of presence on Vine and Instagram.

Ultimately, brands should embrace multichannel marketing for online video. No one site is designed to deliver the right message at the right time to every user. Creating a video and uploading it one major video sharing site is not enough. In order to maximize awareness, targeting capabilities and engagement, branded video content must be distributed across multiple channels.